Thought this was a pretty neat story in light of upcoming events – in the 1970s, a group of astronomers used a prototype Concorde to chase a solar eclipse for 74 minutes across the Sahara. Still kind of amazing to think about a commercial airliner flying at Mach 2.0, 55,000 feet – so fast the passenger windows were warm to the touch.

Yes, a Wikipedia article, but to continue the flight theme – almost sounds like a military operation. Impressive the extent to which some of these large corporations have optimized their operations.

On every week day night, UPS designates 14 different planes at 7 hub airports to be spare aircraft ready to launch at anytime, known as hot-spares. The flight crew will preflight the empty aircraft and then wait to be launched to a gateway to rescue stranded packages, and then return flight back to a hub for sorting. Most commonly hot-spares are launched because of an aircraft mechanical issue, additional volume, or weather. Once the call is made to launch a hot-spare, the aircraft needs to be in the air within 30 minutes or less to assure the packages will make service the next day.

Just some interesting math here – the calculated mean return on a Mega Millions ticket as the jackpot grows, *including data on the number of people who purchase tickets increasing as well*. Yes, the graph does eventually go down – there is an optimal jackpot price when it comes to ticket buying! (Of course as I say… lotteries are also a nice illustration of the difference between the median and the mean.)

Whatever becomes of Mr. Sieferle’s reputation, the scandal around him reveals certain unsuspected problems. When the German literary establishment unanimously denounced Mr. Sieferle’s work as an extremist tract, readers did not nod in agreement. They pulled out their wallets and said, “That must be the book for me.” This is a sign that distrust of authority in Germany has reached worrisome levels, possibly American ones.

A humorous and yet, also rather real, article quoted in the sermon at our church this week.

NEW YORK, NY—Mary Eastwood, 29, says she struggled for years to accept the biblical teaching that human beings are innately corrupted by sin, preferring instead to think that people are basically good. However, now that her daughter Charlotte is right in the prime of her “terrible twos,” Eastwood has changed her mind, fully embracing and even espousing the doctrine of total depravity.

The East Lansing saga continues. The city claim that Country Mill somehow violated the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell continues to strike me as bizarre. If that was actually true, they wouldn’t only be having problems with East Lansing, I’m sure. If that was true, the city would not have had to pass a city ordinance specifically to bar them from the market. Actually the city’s behavior on the whole, at least as reported, has felt very amateurish to me as regards this case.